Recollection Bias Creates the False Stereotype that Exceptionally Successful People are Average Examples of Their Professions, which Promotes Lazy Depressed Resentful Hopelessness
Posted: December 21st, 2024, 2:23 pm
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success..
Recollection bias is a very common human fallacy. We all suffer from it.
Recollection bias is the reason that generally all people drastically overestimate how often they wait in the line at the grocery store. They don't properly count all the routine, normal, unmemorable times they don't wait in line because those are unmemorable in part because it's practically impossible to remember a null event (i.e. not doing something).
Recollection bias is the reason that if you poll spouses individually about how often they do the dishes or some other household chore, and then add up their two responses, they almost always are way over 100%. Spouse 1 may claim they do 65% the chores, and spouse 2 may claim they do 75%. Both genuinely think they do more than half the chores, even though that's a mathematical impossibility. The reason they both drastically overestimate how much they do the chores in relation to someone else is because (1) it's nearly impossible to remember a null act (i.e. remember all the times you weren't doing the dishes) and (2) you don't have the other person's memory to remember all the minutes they stood in front of the sink washing dishes having that memory burned into their brains minute by minute.
Recollection bias is the reason that generally all people at least feel like plane crashes are way more common than they are and thus also generally why most people are much more afraid of flying than driving, even if they know the objective statistics that show driving is way more dangerous.
The irony is that it's precisely the unusualness of something (e.g. a plane crash) is what makes it so newsworthy and memorable, and it's precisely the routineness and regularity of car crashes that makes them unnewsworthy and unmemorable. Here's another way to word irony: The more memorable something is, the more you overestiminate its frequency; and the less frequently something is, the more memorable it is, so the less frequent something is, the more frequent you think it is. If you think something is very common and/or frequent and/or stereotypical, you can be almost guaranteed it is extreme uncommon, rare, and atypical.
So recollection bias not only causes you to believe some things that are false, but rather it has tendency to make you believe the exact opposite. The very fact that something is exceptionally rare causes us to think it is common; and the very fact that something is common and thus not newsworthy and un-memorable causes us to think it is uncommon.
This is why our stereotypes tend to not only be very wrong but actually be the exact opposite of what's true. The very fact that someone is atypical and ultra-exceptional and in thus in truth utterly non-stereotypical is exactly what makes them become our false stereotype for something. Your stereotypes don't just tend to be wrong; they are almost always the total utter exact opposite of what is actually typical.
If I ask you to imagine a stereotypical professional athlete, some guy that gets millions per year will come to mind. But he is to professional athletes what a plane crash is to crashes. Most crashes aren't plane crashes; they are car crashes. Plane crashes account for a teeny tiny fraction of crashes. Planes are ridiculously safe. Likewise, even in just the major leagues, most athletes don't even make six figures, let alone millions. And most professional athletes aren't even in the major leagues and would consider themselves extremely lucky to be even making nearly $100k.
If I ask you to imagine the stereotypical professional musician, band, or lead singer, you'll probably think of someone like Beyonce or Talyor Swift, who is famous and makes millions.
Most professional singers make about as much as the average Uber driver.
Most professional athletes would be happy and excited to make as much as the average Uber driver, because they make less than the average Uber driver.
A band that reliably makes $50 per week (to split between its members) is already way above the vast majority of paid, professional bands.
Same goes if I ask you to imagine the stereotypical "CEO" or "Corporate Executive" (e.g. a COO, CTO, CFO, or even "General Manger", etc.).
The average CEO doesn't even make six figures, let alone millions.
In fact, most CEOs presumably don't make any money in their role as CEO, but rather are working for a start-up for free in hopes that it takes off, similar to the average garage band doing gigs for "exposure" and no pay, or the millions of authors whose books are available 100% free on Amazon, or the way most people who do athletics and are on a sports team as adults don't even get paid at all to do it, but actually lose money at it.
When you consider these various professions such as being a CEO, a professional athlete, an author or professional writer, a professional singer or musician, or a professional artist, painter, etc., for every 1 person making millions per year doing it there are thousands of people barely making a living wage, and for every one making a living wage there are a 1,000 not even making that much, who are probably still thrilled to making anything, since, for each 1 making a just a few thousand dollars per year, there's thousands of people who have not yet even made a total of $1,000 yet in their entire life at that profession, who again are probably thrilled to have made the few hundred dollars total that they have compared to all those still fighting to make their first dollar at it.
You show me a boxer or MMA fighter or garage band that just land their first gig in which they make $25 in profit to do a match in front of an audience or perform for the evening on a stage, and I'll show you someone who is already more successful than most people in their field and is probably thrilled to be getting that measly $25. They are already above average and atypical. And all they got so far is $25 in profit, not millions. I dance for fun, but the when I got paid $25 to perform (which took 40+ hours of work to choreograph and practice) it was one of the best days of my life. I put the first dollar I got paid for dancing up on the wall above my fire place. And dancing isn't even my #1 passion or industry.
Why does all this matter?
One reason is because if you see the most exceptionally exceptional people as stereotypical and average in some industry or field, then that will deeply discourage you. You'll think it's too difficult and challenging to succeed, and you will think it works like a lottery.
For example, if you show me someone who thinks Michael Jordan was an average basketball player who played no better than the average paid basketball player in the world (including the minor league guys at your local community center who average an income of like $50 a week playing basketball), then they are going to think one of the two things both of which will have the same effect:
(1) They will think it's unfair, like a literal million-dollar lottery. They are going to think that it doesn't matter how hard you work or how well you do a job or how talented you are, in which case why bother working hard if hard work doesn't matter. They are going to think that making so much money is pure luck and totally not based on merit. Thus, no matter how much they might want to become a professional athlete (or writer, author, singer, etc.), they won't bother to put more work or investment into it than it would take to buy a $1 lottery ticket from the local grocery store. They think it's all luck so leave it to luck, in which case for them it is all luck. Then when they don't succeed at that professional at all, they'll say it's just luck. And, sure, if all you do is the measly equivalent of lazily buy lottery tickets and hope you get ultra lucky, then such career success (for you) is not only a matter of luck but reserved only for those who are insanely luckily despite their lazy defeated attitude.
(2) They will drastically overestimate how challenging and expensive it is to succeed in that career at an average level. So even if they weren't thinking it's based on luck, they would still fall victim the second fallacy of thinking it's just not worth the cost and that the ROI would be too low. If you think becoming a merely average professional athlete requires working as hard as and succeeding at the level of Michael Jordon (or any other athlete making millions), and putting in as much as work as Michael Jordan did and having as much as talent as he did, then it would be foolish to go after that. You'd be putting in ridiculously above average effort to get merely average results, which wouldn't make sense. You'd think, if that is how much talent and work it too to just be average in that field, then that's a foolish field to choose. If you think the odds of becoming a professional singer and becoming merely average (let alone slightly above average) as a professional singer requires having as much talent, dedication, and raw luck as Beyonce or Talyor Swift, then it would be foolish to take the tiniest step in that direction. The logic isn't wrong, it's the premise. It doesn't take Michael-Jordan-level-effort-and-investment to get way above average results. Someone who is way above average is still not even close to Michael Jordan or Beyonce. A CEO who is making way more money than the average CEO is still not even close to being a CEO of S&P 500 company.
By looking at the most exceptionally highest paid, the most exceptionally hard-working, most exceptionally talented, most exceptionally lucky versions of a certain profession and falsely seeing those top 0.00001% as being stereotypical and average, one falsely concludes that they themselves don't even have what it takes to become even merely average in that field. So they give up. They think, why would you do exceptionally ridiculous work for merely average results? Why work as ridiculously hard as Michael Jordan and be as ridiculously and exceptionally dedicated and committed as Michael Jordan to be merely average in my field?
A similar analogy can be when someone scroll through social media and sees all the smiling faces and brags from their friends and family. If they don't realize the sample is extremely misrepresent it can be so intimidating and repressing as to be debilitating. If you think the average person you went to high school with is now ultra-rich, ultra-happy, and the best parent in the world who never gets stressed, angry, or has a bad day, then you'll just feel like absolute hopeless garbage in comparison. But that's because you are drastically mis-estimating what the true average actually is. You think it would take so much insane level of work and time and energy to merely get close to as good as average that you feel hopeless and give up and just wallow in debilitated depression.
In reality, by definition, you are probably already at the average level.
On average people are average so you are almost certainly fairly average.
To become above average at anything typically only requires the tiniest little bit of time or energy. The smallest little step to get better at something will typically make you above average at it almost overnight, especially with so many people falling victim to their own fallacies and thus mis-estimating the costs of average-level success in a career or hobby and thus giving up and sinking further behind into their pit of despair, depression, hopeless, and resentful wallowing.
Something like 98% of people want to write a book, even though 2% ever do. Then probably only 2% who write one ever actually publish it. And then even of those who do publish a book probably only about 2% ever actually sell a copy let alone make even just $1 (one single little dollar) in profit selling books as an author.
The same goes for people wanting to start a business and/or be a CEO, or other top-level executive like COO or CFO.
Many people get jealous and hateful of those most exceptionally successful versions of these things (e.g. the tiny few CEOs who do make millions and get huge bonuses from their employers, or the professional athletes who do make millions and get shoe deals worth millions more, and the Taylor Swifts and Beyonces etc.). One reason they get so jealous and hateful at those exceptionally successful versions is because these haters at some level have a desire to succeed even at just an average level in those fields. But, in part by the overestimate what that average level is, they never even take the tiniest first step. They don't even a page of their would-be book. They don't register their LLC or single-member corporation, with themselves as CEO, even though either of those that takes less than day of work. They never even actually have a practice session with their would-be garage band or even gift it an official name, let alone go out and do the work to get themselves to a nice $50 a week income for their band.
You can see the thought process they are having and why--despite being utterly fallcious and illogical--it can feel like it makes sense and that they just lay down, giving up, and wallowing in their pity party of hopeless, depressed misery. It starts with the recollection bias fallacy, and then boils down to this:
"If I can't be as successful in my dream job as Michael Jordan or Beyonce overnight, then it doesn't make sense to even start working at it all."
There's countless CEOs out there being paid by their boss, i..e the owner(s) of the company), who get paid $50k-$100k per year, who are thrilled they even break 6-figures by getting that $100k per year income. But there's also a lot of people out there who realtively easily could get there, but who never even do the equiveently of writing the first page of thier book.
There's plenty of authors out there who make about $50k in profit per year from writing, and now do it as their full-time job, and just barely make enough to get by, and are thrilled to be a professional writer. And there's thousands of times authors like that than ones making millions. But there are even more people who have everything it takes to relatively easily make it to that incredible level of success (i.e. getting paid $50k per year to write books) but who have not even written 1 page of their first book.
This a bitter pill for some people to swallow. But I believe in honesty not sweetness, so I love handing out bitter pills, at least to those who follow me and read my writing because they want those bitter pills. If you aren't wildly successful in your allegedly preferred career or dream career, it's almost certainly because you are choosing to lazily wallow in complaining hopeless unproductive misery because you have chosen to falsely view people making millions as average and thus drastically overestimated what it takes to even achieve an an average level in that industry or field and thus gave up before you ever started.
Assuming you are still relatively young, you have everything you need to be an above average professional athlete. You can make it happen 100% guaranteed if you just choose to.
Likewise, no matter your age, you have everything you need to write a book and become a paid writer making more than the average author at writing. It's a simple choice, not a matter of luck. Becoming as well-paid at writing books as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling may not be a simple matter of choice, but they aren't remotely close to average. They are the top 0.000001%. You can become a way above average professional writing who makes way above average income from writing as compared to all other paid professional writers, with almost infinite ease, just as a simple matter of choice. It's shockingly easy and cheap actually to succeed at the incredible above average level precisely because so many other people who would want it and would do it never even start the process because they falsely see Stephen King and J.K. Rowling as average and thus are intimidated and wallow in lazy defeated misery instead of even taking a tiny step in that direction.
Likewise, anyone can become an above average CEO (or similar high-level executive such as a COO, CFO, or CTO). You can not only become a paid CEO, you can become a CEO who makes way above average for a CEO, with infinite ease. It's a simple matter of choice. It's as infinitely easy as choosing to write a book and sitting down and writing it.
But, just as 99% of people who claim they want to write a book never do, 99.999% of people who could easily become a ultra-above-average well-paid CEO never even take the tiniest step to making that happen.
And that speaks to why it is so easy and cheap to achieve so well at those kinds of things: Once you become committed, almost all the competition fades away.
There's so few people who put in the kind of dedicated lifelong work that Michael Jordan did, that we can be certain he wasn't the most genetically gifted and didn't have the best high school basketball coach world. There are probably thousands, if not a billion people, who have been born with better genetics in place where they have more luck than Michael Jordan in terms of what gives one the chance to succeed at athletics (e.g. the highest-funded best high school basketball team and a school lunch that's the best and most nutritious the world etc.). But those people didn't compete at all. They gave up. 99.99% of people give up.
That's not to say you could achieve as well as Michael Jordan in basketball (or your chosen field) just through dedication and commitment and such. No, because Michael Jordan isn't even close to average. Out of all the people paid to play sports, he's in the top 0.00001 percent tile.
You can absolutely get into the top 2 percent title in your field through sheer dedication and hard work.
You can't become Michael Jordan through sheer dedication, willpower, and commitment. You'd need a little bit of luck too, namely in terms of genetics. But, no matter your genetics, you can almost certainly make it to the top 2% of paid athletes. You can become an exceptionally way of average paid athlete, one that 98% of other paid athletes are jealous of, and you'll get even more jealousy and hate from people who've never been paid a single dollar to play sports not because of they lacked the genetics, opportunity, or such but because they lazily wallow in their own defeated hopelessness.
Personally, I'm more inspired by a guy like Muggsy Bogues, who made it into the NBA despite being only 5 ft 3 in tall. And remember most professional basketball players don't make it into the NBA; they play in the minor leagues.
Compared to becoming a basketball, becoming a way above average successful author way above average successful CEO (who is paid more than the vast majority of other paid CEOs) is even less tied to genetics or luck or such. It's a simple choice. It's as infinitely easy as choosing to not drink alcohol or choosing to not cheat on your spouse or choosing to lose weight.
The competition is actually so little once you actually choose to be committed and dedicated to such a thing.
While there are a lot of self-proclaimed wanna-be professional writers and CEOs, and there a lot of people who are least secretly jealous of professional bestselling authors, and CEOs, and professional athletes, there's so few people who actually are committed to competing at such a thing.
Once you become truly committed to such a thing, 99.99% of the competition you might thought was there fades away.
Like I said, there were probably 1,000s of people who played high school basketball around the same time that Michael Jordan did who would have beaten him and done better than him if only they had put in the work he did.
Even if in genetic talent and other matters of pure luck you are in the bottom 1% in your desired field, meaning if they all competing you'd get beat by 99% of people, you can still reach the top 2% or so in your field through sheer dedication and commitment easily because those other 99% of people who could beat you won't even compete. They won't play. In terms of the game, the are nothing; they are nobodies; they are just lazily programmed NPCs who vaguely decorate the sidelines while you walk easily to incredible exceptional success.
Once you choose to be truly committed and dedicated, you become like Neo at the end of the first Matrix movie, when he see the computer code and becomes nearly omnipotent. 99.9% of the competition just fades away. Because they aren't really competing. They are just lazy haters who gave up because they are seeing an insanely intimidating hallucination, in large part due to the recollection bias.
They don't realize how easy it is to win so they don't compete, which makes it that much more ridiculously easy for you to win if you just choose to.
Even if you just look at it from the perspective of finances and numbers. It's so easy to become a millionaire. You can do it with just $5 per day (only $35 per week, only $1,850 per yer). And, yet, most won't.
They choose to lose, and they are very successful at losing. They choose to lose, and they get what they want, meaning what they choose.
With so many looser-choosers, if you choose to win, you will be shocked at how ridiculously cheap and easy it is. You will feel like Neo.
And people will say to you: "Wow, you really cracked the code to you to the Matrix didn't you. How did you do it? Can you teach me?"
One way to memorably retain this less is this simple process: Don't think of career success as a ladder. Think of is pyramid. That's because at each lower rung of the ladder/pyramid, there's an entire order of magnitude more people. For every 1 CEO in the S&P 500, there's literally 10x and CEOs in the next top 5,000 companies, and literally 100 CEOs in the next top 50,000 companies, and so on until you've covered all the millions of companies. There's players in a top major league like the NFL, WWE, or UFC who make less than $100k per year. In fact, there's wrestlers in the WWE and fighters in the UFC who don't even make a living wage, and they are very close to the top of the pyramid. For every 1 fighter whose lucky enough to be int he UFC or WWE almost making a minimum wage, there's hundreds in one of many second tier leagues, and then even more in third tier leagues and so on.
It's not a tall ladder; it's a giant pyramid.
And, you know what? Compared to a tall ladder, it's super easy to climb a pyramid. It's a staircase. It's practically as easy as walking. And most people never take the first step despite acting like they really want to be at the top.
Calm down, take a deep breath, let the intimidating hallucination fade away, and just walk calmly and gracefully up the staircase to incredible success in your career, your chosen life goals, and your wildest dreams.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius
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Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success.. Success at your chosen goal is guaranteed, whether it is a financial goal, fitness goal, or any other ambitious but at least theoretically possible goal. If your goal is to become a millionaire, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed. If you weigh 350 lbs and your goal is to lose 200 lbs and get 6-pack abs, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed.
Recollection bias is a very common human fallacy. We all suffer from it.
Recollection bias is the reason that generally all people drastically overestimate how often they wait in the line at the grocery store. They don't properly count all the routine, normal, unmemorable times they don't wait in line because those are unmemorable in part because it's practically impossible to remember a null event (i.e. not doing something).
Recollection bias is the reason that if you poll spouses individually about how often they do the dishes or some other household chore, and then add up their two responses, they almost always are way over 100%. Spouse 1 may claim they do 65% the chores, and spouse 2 may claim they do 75%. Both genuinely think they do more than half the chores, even though that's a mathematical impossibility. The reason they both drastically overestimate how much they do the chores in relation to someone else is because (1) it's nearly impossible to remember a null act (i.e. remember all the times you weren't doing the dishes) and (2) you don't have the other person's memory to remember all the minutes they stood in front of the sink washing dishes having that memory burned into their brains minute by minute.
Recollection bias is the reason that generally all people at least feel like plane crashes are way more common than they are and thus also generally why most people are much more afraid of flying than driving, even if they know the objective statistics that show driving is way more dangerous.
The irony is that it's precisely the unusualness of something (e.g. a plane crash) is what makes it so newsworthy and memorable, and it's precisely the routineness and regularity of car crashes that makes them unnewsworthy and unmemorable. Here's another way to word irony: The more memorable something is, the more you overestiminate its frequency; and the less frequently something is, the more memorable it is, so the less frequent something is, the more frequent you think it is. If you think something is very common and/or frequent and/or stereotypical, you can be almost guaranteed it is extreme uncommon, rare, and atypical.
So recollection bias not only causes you to believe some things that are false, but rather it has tendency to make you believe the exact opposite. The very fact that something is exceptionally rare causes us to think it is common; and the very fact that something is common and thus not newsworthy and un-memorable causes us to think it is uncommon.
This is why our stereotypes tend to not only be very wrong but actually be the exact opposite of what's true. The very fact that someone is atypical and ultra-exceptional and in thus in truth utterly non-stereotypical is exactly what makes them become our false stereotype for something. Your stereotypes don't just tend to be wrong; they are almost always the total utter exact opposite of what is actually typical.
If I ask you to imagine a stereotypical professional athlete, some guy that gets millions per year will come to mind. But he is to professional athletes what a plane crash is to crashes. Most crashes aren't plane crashes; they are car crashes. Plane crashes account for a teeny tiny fraction of crashes. Planes are ridiculously safe. Likewise, even in just the major leagues, most athletes don't even make six figures, let alone millions. And most professional athletes aren't even in the major leagues and would consider themselves extremely lucky to be even making nearly $100k.
If I ask you to imagine the stereotypical professional musician, band, or lead singer, you'll probably think of someone like Beyonce or Talyor Swift, who is famous and makes millions.
Most professional singers make about as much as the average Uber driver.
Most professional athletes would be happy and excited to make as much as the average Uber driver, because they make less than the average Uber driver.
A band that reliably makes $50 per week (to split between its members) is already way above the vast majority of paid, professional bands.
Same goes if I ask you to imagine the stereotypical "CEO" or "Corporate Executive" (e.g. a COO, CTO, CFO, or even "General Manger", etc.).
The average CEO doesn't even make six figures, let alone millions.
In fact, most CEOs presumably don't make any money in their role as CEO, but rather are working for a start-up for free in hopes that it takes off, similar to the average garage band doing gigs for "exposure" and no pay, or the millions of authors whose books are available 100% free on Amazon, or the way most people who do athletics and are on a sports team as adults don't even get paid at all to do it, but actually lose money at it.
When you consider these various professions such as being a CEO, a professional athlete, an author or professional writer, a professional singer or musician, or a professional artist, painter, etc., for every 1 person making millions per year doing it there are thousands of people barely making a living wage, and for every one making a living wage there are a 1,000 not even making that much, who are probably still thrilled to making anything, since, for each 1 making a just a few thousand dollars per year, there's thousands of people who have not yet even made a total of $1,000 yet in their entire life at that profession, who again are probably thrilled to have made the few hundred dollars total that they have compared to all those still fighting to make their first dollar at it.
You show me a boxer or MMA fighter or garage band that just land their first gig in which they make $25 in profit to do a match in front of an audience or perform for the evening on a stage, and I'll show you someone who is already more successful than most people in their field and is probably thrilled to be getting that measly $25. They are already above average and atypical. And all they got so far is $25 in profit, not millions. I dance for fun, but the when I got paid $25 to perform (which took 40+ hours of work to choreograph and practice) it was one of the best days of my life. I put the first dollar I got paid for dancing up on the wall above my fire place. And dancing isn't even my #1 passion or industry.
Why does all this matter?
One reason is because if you see the most exceptionally exceptional people as stereotypical and average in some industry or field, then that will deeply discourage you. You'll think it's too difficult and challenging to succeed, and you will think it works like a lottery.
For example, if you show me someone who thinks Michael Jordan was an average basketball player who played no better than the average paid basketball player in the world (including the minor league guys at your local community center who average an income of like $50 a week playing basketball), then they are going to think one of the two things both of which will have the same effect:
(1) They will think it's unfair, like a literal million-dollar lottery. They are going to think that it doesn't matter how hard you work or how well you do a job or how talented you are, in which case why bother working hard if hard work doesn't matter. They are going to think that making so much money is pure luck and totally not based on merit. Thus, no matter how much they might want to become a professional athlete (or writer, author, singer, etc.), they won't bother to put more work or investment into it than it would take to buy a $1 lottery ticket from the local grocery store. They think it's all luck so leave it to luck, in which case for them it is all luck. Then when they don't succeed at that professional at all, they'll say it's just luck. And, sure, if all you do is the measly equivalent of lazily buy lottery tickets and hope you get ultra lucky, then such career success (for you) is not only a matter of luck but reserved only for those who are insanely luckily despite their lazy defeated attitude.
(2) They will drastically overestimate how challenging and expensive it is to succeed in that career at an average level. So even if they weren't thinking it's based on luck, they would still fall victim the second fallacy of thinking it's just not worth the cost and that the ROI would be too low. If you think becoming a merely average professional athlete requires working as hard as and succeeding at the level of Michael Jordon (or any other athlete making millions), and putting in as much as work as Michael Jordan did and having as much as talent as he did, then it would be foolish to go after that. You'd be putting in ridiculously above average effort to get merely average results, which wouldn't make sense. You'd think, if that is how much talent and work it too to just be average in that field, then that's a foolish field to choose. If you think the odds of becoming a professional singer and becoming merely average (let alone slightly above average) as a professional singer requires having as much talent, dedication, and raw luck as Beyonce or Talyor Swift, then it would be foolish to take the tiniest step in that direction. The logic isn't wrong, it's the premise. It doesn't take Michael-Jordan-level-effort-and-investment to get way above average results. Someone who is way above average is still not even close to Michael Jordan or Beyonce. A CEO who is making way more money than the average CEO is still not even close to being a CEO of S&P 500 company.
By looking at the most exceptionally highest paid, the most exceptionally hard-working, most exceptionally talented, most exceptionally lucky versions of a certain profession and falsely seeing those top 0.00001% as being stereotypical and average, one falsely concludes that they themselves don't even have what it takes to become even merely average in that field. So they give up. They think, why would you do exceptionally ridiculous work for merely average results? Why work as ridiculously hard as Michael Jordan and be as ridiculously and exceptionally dedicated and committed as Michael Jordan to be merely average in my field?
A similar analogy can be when someone scroll through social media and sees all the smiling faces and brags from their friends and family. If they don't realize the sample is extremely misrepresent it can be so intimidating and repressing as to be debilitating. If you think the average person you went to high school with is now ultra-rich, ultra-happy, and the best parent in the world who never gets stressed, angry, or has a bad day, then you'll just feel like absolute hopeless garbage in comparison. But that's because you are drastically mis-estimating what the true average actually is. You think it would take so much insane level of work and time and energy to merely get close to as good as average that you feel hopeless and give up and just wallow in debilitated depression.
In reality, by definition, you are probably already at the average level.
On average people are average so you are almost certainly fairly average.
To become above average at anything typically only requires the tiniest little bit of time or energy. The smallest little step to get better at something will typically make you above average at it almost overnight, especially with so many people falling victim to their own fallacies and thus mis-estimating the costs of average-level success in a career or hobby and thus giving up and sinking further behind into their pit of despair, depression, hopeless, and resentful wallowing.
Something like 98% of people want to write a book, even though 2% ever do. Then probably only 2% who write one ever actually publish it. And then even of those who do publish a book probably only about 2% ever actually sell a copy let alone make even just $1 (one single little dollar) in profit selling books as an author.
The same goes for people wanting to start a business and/or be a CEO, or other top-level executive like COO or CFO.
Many people get jealous and hateful of those most exceptionally successful versions of these things (e.g. the tiny few CEOs who do make millions and get huge bonuses from their employers, or the professional athletes who do make millions and get shoe deals worth millions more, and the Taylor Swifts and Beyonces etc.). One reason they get so jealous and hateful at those exceptionally successful versions is because these haters at some level have a desire to succeed even at just an average level in those fields. But, in part by the overestimate what that average level is, they never even take the tiniest first step. They don't even a page of their would-be book. They don't register their LLC or single-member corporation, with themselves as CEO, even though either of those that takes less than day of work. They never even actually have a practice session with their would-be garage band or even gift it an official name, let alone go out and do the work to get themselves to a nice $50 a week income for their band.
You can see the thought process they are having and why--despite being utterly fallcious and illogical--it can feel like it makes sense and that they just lay down, giving up, and wallowing in their pity party of hopeless, depressed misery. It starts with the recollection bias fallacy, and then boils down to this:
"If I can't be as successful in my dream job as Michael Jordan or Beyonce overnight, then it doesn't make sense to even start working at it all."
There's countless CEOs out there being paid by their boss, i..e the owner(s) of the company), who get paid $50k-$100k per year, who are thrilled they even break 6-figures by getting that $100k per year income. But there's also a lot of people out there who realtively easily could get there, but who never even do the equiveently of writing the first page of thier book.
There's plenty of authors out there who make about $50k in profit per year from writing, and now do it as their full-time job, and just barely make enough to get by, and are thrilled to be a professional writer. And there's thousands of times authors like that than ones making millions. But there are even more people who have everything it takes to relatively easily make it to that incredible level of success (i.e. getting paid $50k per year to write books) but who have not even written 1 page of their first book.
This a bitter pill for some people to swallow. But I believe in honesty not sweetness, so I love handing out bitter pills, at least to those who follow me and read my writing because they want those bitter pills. If you aren't wildly successful in your allegedly preferred career or dream career, it's almost certainly because you are choosing to lazily wallow in complaining hopeless unproductive misery because you have chosen to falsely view people making millions as average and thus drastically overestimated what it takes to even achieve an an average level in that industry or field and thus gave up before you ever started.
Assuming you are still relatively young, you have everything you need to be an above average professional athlete. You can make it happen 100% guaranteed if you just choose to.
Likewise, no matter your age, you have everything you need to write a book and become a paid writer making more than the average author at writing. It's a simple choice, not a matter of luck. Becoming as well-paid at writing books as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling may not be a simple matter of choice, but they aren't remotely close to average. They are the top 0.000001%. You can become a way above average professional writing who makes way above average income from writing as compared to all other paid professional writers, with almost infinite ease, just as a simple matter of choice. It's shockingly easy and cheap actually to succeed at the incredible above average level precisely because so many other people who would want it and would do it never even start the process because they falsely see Stephen King and J.K. Rowling as average and thus are intimidated and wallow in lazy defeated misery instead of even taking a tiny step in that direction.
Likewise, anyone can become an above average CEO (or similar high-level executive such as a COO, CFO, or CTO). You can not only become a paid CEO, you can become a CEO who makes way above average for a CEO, with infinite ease. It's a simple matter of choice. It's as infinitely easy as choosing to write a book and sitting down and writing it.
But, just as 99% of people who claim they want to write a book never do, 99.999% of people who could easily become a ultra-above-average well-paid CEO never even take the tiniest step to making that happen.
And that speaks to why it is so easy and cheap to achieve so well at those kinds of things: Once you become committed, almost all the competition fades away.
There's so few people who put in the kind of dedicated lifelong work that Michael Jordan did, that we can be certain he wasn't the most genetically gifted and didn't have the best high school basketball coach world. There are probably thousands, if not a billion people, who have been born with better genetics in place where they have more luck than Michael Jordan in terms of what gives one the chance to succeed at athletics (e.g. the highest-funded best high school basketball team and a school lunch that's the best and most nutritious the world etc.). But those people didn't compete at all. They gave up. 99.99% of people give up.
That's not to say you could achieve as well as Michael Jordan in basketball (or your chosen field) just through dedication and commitment and such. No, because Michael Jordan isn't even close to average. Out of all the people paid to play sports, he's in the top 0.00001 percent tile.
You can absolutely get into the top 2 percent title in your field through sheer dedication and hard work.
You can't become Michael Jordan through sheer dedication, willpower, and commitment. You'd need a little bit of luck too, namely in terms of genetics. But, no matter your genetics, you can almost certainly make it to the top 2% of paid athletes. You can become an exceptionally way of average paid athlete, one that 98% of other paid athletes are jealous of, and you'll get even more jealousy and hate from people who've never been paid a single dollar to play sports not because of they lacked the genetics, opportunity, or such but because they lazily wallow in their own defeated hopelessness.
Personally, I'm more inspired by a guy like Muggsy Bogues, who made it into the NBA despite being only 5 ft 3 in tall. And remember most professional basketball players don't make it into the NBA; they play in the minor leagues.
Compared to becoming a basketball, becoming a way above average successful author way above average successful CEO (who is paid more than the vast majority of other paid CEOs) is even less tied to genetics or luck or such. It's a simple choice. It's as infinitely easy as choosing to not drink alcohol or choosing to not cheat on your spouse or choosing to lose weight.
The competition is actually so little once you actually choose to be committed and dedicated to such a thing.
While there are a lot of self-proclaimed wanna-be professional writers and CEOs, and there a lot of people who are least secretly jealous of professional bestselling authors, and CEOs, and professional athletes, there's so few people who actually are committed to competing at such a thing.
Once you become truly committed to such a thing, 99.99% of the competition you might thought was there fades away.
Like I said, there were probably 1,000s of people who played high school basketball around the same time that Michael Jordan did who would have beaten him and done better than him if only they had put in the work he did.
Even if in genetic talent and other matters of pure luck you are in the bottom 1% in your desired field, meaning if they all competing you'd get beat by 99% of people, you can still reach the top 2% or so in your field through sheer dedication and commitment easily because those other 99% of people who could beat you won't even compete. They won't play. In terms of the game, the are nothing; they are nobodies; they are just lazily programmed NPCs who vaguely decorate the sidelines while you walk easily to incredible exceptional success.
Once you choose to be truly committed and dedicated, you become like Neo at the end of the first Matrix movie, when he see the computer code and becomes nearly omnipotent. 99.9% of the competition just fades away. Because they aren't really competing. They are just lazy haters who gave up because they are seeing an insanely intimidating hallucination, in large part due to the recollection bias.
They don't realize how easy it is to win so they don't compete, which makes it that much more ridiculously easy for you to win if you just choose to.
Even if you just look at it from the perspective of finances and numbers. It's so easy to become a millionaire. You can do it with just $5 per day (only $35 per week, only $1,850 per yer). And, yet, most won't.
They choose to lose, and they are very successful at losing. They choose to lose, and they get what they want, meaning what they choose.
With so many looser-choosers, if you choose to win, you will be shocked at how ridiculously cheap and easy it is. You will feel like Neo.
And people will say to you: "Wow, you really cracked the code to you to the Matrix didn't you. How did you do it? Can you teach me?"
One way to memorably retain this less is this simple process: Don't think of career success as a ladder. Think of is pyramid. That's because at each lower rung of the ladder/pyramid, there's an entire order of magnitude more people. For every 1 CEO in the S&P 500, there's literally 10x and CEOs in the next top 5,000 companies, and literally 100 CEOs in the next top 50,000 companies, and so on until you've covered all the millions of companies. There's players in a top major league like the NFL, WWE, or UFC who make less than $100k per year. In fact, there's wrestlers in the WWE and fighters in the UFC who don't even make a living wage, and they are very close to the top of the pyramid. For every 1 fighter whose lucky enough to be int he UFC or WWE almost making a minimum wage, there's hundreds in one of many second tier leagues, and then even more in third tier leagues and so on.
It's not a tall ladder; it's a giant pyramid.
And, you know what? Compared to a tall ladder, it's super easy to climb a pyramid. It's a staircase. It's practically as easy as walking. And most people never take the first step despite acting like they really want to be at the top.
Calm down, take a deep breath, let the intimidating hallucination fade away, and just walk calmly and gracefully up the staircase to incredible success in your career, your chosen life goals, and your wildest dreams.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is the author of In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. He also runs a free mentoring program that guarantees success.. Success at your chosen goal is guaranteed, whether it is a financial goal, fitness goal, or any other ambitious but at least theoretically possible goal. If your goal is to become a millionaire, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed. If you weigh 350 lbs and your goal is to lose 200 lbs and get 6-pack abs, it will happen if you follow his system, guaranteed.